


Cruel and Unusual

by Jane St Clair (3jane)



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-08
Updated: 2011-08-08
Packaged: 2017-10-22 09:56:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/236802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/3jane/pseuds/Jane%20St%20Clair
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How rats get out of missile silos.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cruel and Unusual

  
The ship was still there.

By all reason it should have been gone.  Everyone knew it was there; the  
bodies still piled in the corridors hadn't resulted from an  
interdepartmental squabble in the Bureau of Land Management.  The Smoker  
hadn't even had the decency to bury them.  Filthy.

The silo range had to be one of North Dakota's ugliest landscape  
features.  Above ground, it looked like a string of pillboxes on the  
border of some now-crumbled Communist nation.  Underground, it was  
functional concrete and iron, and it smelled cold.  Shimmering steel-  
and-glass towers were reserved for other horrors.  The only lights still  
on were small and red and unhelpful.  One DD-battery flashlight did more  
good.

They'd reached it, before, so at least this wasn't a blind search.    
1010, 1011, 1012.  Empty.  The silos were supposed to be full of  
concrete, supposed to have been paved over to fulfill the 'never again'  
promise at the end of the Cold War.

Bunker 1013 had blood on its tiny window pane.  The lock only gave after  
five attempts with the FBI-issue pick.  The Lone Gunmen's stolen codes,  
scrawled on a sheet of looseleaf in Byers' precise handwriting, opened  
the bolt.  Frohike's good luck wish glared in red ink from the bottom of  
the page.  A sad, strange, wistful little man, that one, but a good  
person for all that, and gentle.  He deserved more credit than he got.    
Some other day, there would have to be time for him.

And the ship was there.  It was horrible; it wasn't for human eyes.  It  
just floated there as if it hadn't enough respect for basic physics to  
settle to the ground.  The whole room smelled like oil.

The space was too large for the flashlight to do any real good.  Wet  
snow runners made kissing sounds against the asphalt floor.  So dark  
that seventy-two inches of grimy thief was just another shadow until it  
became something to trip over.  No reaction to the impact but the  
smallest of whimpers.  When the hand-held light hit his face, Alex  
Krycek just buried his face deeper in the arm of his coat and refused to  
move.

Thief.  Killer.

He'd been on that cold floor for too many hours.  Even at the surface,  
the ground was frozen.  This far down, the concrete would be a conduit  
for body heat, and he had precious little remaining.  His kidneys might  
be damaged.

Every muscle on him was showing so starkly that the tissue striations  
were visible: advanced dehydration.  The blood on the window pane had to  
have come from his fingertips.  There wasn't any skin left on them.    
He'd been that desperate to get out.

"Krycek."

Whimper.  No movement.

Slap.  The dehydrated flesh made the impact sickening.  "Krycek, wake  
up."

Sob.  Ugly sound, too dry, fear tearing desiccated tissues.

Shaking him.  "Come on.  I need you to get up."  He had to drink.  Had  
to get him out of there.  "Come *on*, you son of a bitch, open your  
eyes!"

"Watch your mouth, Scully.  You sound like a goddamn whore."

The words were humourous under the rasp, but they made her too angry and  
she hit him again.

He whispered, "Fuck."

She could be angry later.  Scully got his shoulders into her lap and  
tilted his head up to the water bottle.  Half an inch of the liquid went  
down his throat, enough to wake him up.  Enough to make him tremble  
against her body, half-crying but still tearless.  He needed saline, but  
that was in the car, waiting for her to feel merciful enough to give it  
to him.

She never really understood, later, how she got him to the car.  It  
became possible because it was necessary - she was willing to believe in  
that - and even so, it was still only possible in stages.  They spent  
more minutes resting on the stairs than they did moving.  More than once  
Krycek twisted away from her grip and pressed himself back against the  
wall, shaking, his eyes completely blank.  In spite of his use of her  
name, she wasn't entirely sure that he knew who she was.

The door opened like a dead thing and outside it was dark.  Even with  
the days so short, this far north on the edge of winter, the darkness  
meant the climb had taken them almost two hours.  The man collapsed at  
Scully's feet was more than halfway dead.  His knees had simply given on  
the final landing and she'd had to drag him outside.  The bastard hadn't  
even made a sound except to whimper when his body, too big and awkward  
for her to manage with any degree of care, hit the doorframe.

*

9:23 pm.  -10oC.

"Who . . . ?"

"Scully."

"Whathefuck?"

"Shut up."

*

( . . . had the dacha the summer of 19--   glassed-in porch with windows  
so goddamned filthy thought it'd never come off   a whole day washing  
them, scrubbing over and over with wadded-up newspaper and ammonia, the  
smell getting all over the house   brilliant light coming through the  
clean patches, colouring the rooms, making all the greens more vivid     
grass leaves garden house with white trim cleaned up so beautiful . . .

(. . . hard on the paint, that cold   it came off in huge flakes, like  
dead skin sloughing away   underneath the wood was marvellous, it kept  
the same tones it must have had when it was first cut   big northern  
conifers cut down to build those cabins . . .

(. . . walking out in the garden in the middle of the night   half-moon  
light refracting off the lake half a mile off   wanting to make love to  
someone just tonight . . .

(so thirsty

(smells so goddamned awful)

"Wha -"

"In a car, in North Dakota.  Scully, Krycek.  I'm Scully.  Try to  
remember."

*

The car clock said 11:50.  The liquid crystal display was green.

"I . . ."

"North Dakota.  In a car.  With Scully.  Hauled you out of a missile  
silo."

"Fuck."

"This is the fifth time, Krycek.  Try not to forget.  Or else stay  
asleep."

-17oC.

*

She didn't want to look as she stripped him.  Krycek's body, even after  
the saline and the glucose drips she'd given him in the car, looked like  
some kind of perversion.  He had heavy muscles and he was filthy and  
smelled like a dead thing and he was too tired to hold himself upright.    
She had to brace his shoulder against her chest while he hunched over  
and cried softly, utterly incoherent.  A dozen times he'd woken and  
asked where he was, and the first six she'd answered him, though she  
might as well have been talking to herself.  She could have cursed him  
or beaten him and he wouldn't have noticed.  She wondered if he was  
crazy.

His clothes were going to burn like tinder, there was so much oil in  
them.

He had broad hips for a man, enough to give him a swagger, thick muscle  
running from his thighs up to his waist.  Anonymous white knit cotton  
under the jeans she'd skinned off.  If this were a hundred years ago,  
she could wash him like this and call it decent.  Not even doctors saw  
you naked, then, until you were dead.

Scully stepped back from Krycek and the man immediately folded in on  
himself.  The bathroom light was brilliant and unflattering, like a  
department store dressing room or an autopsy bay.  He slouched on the  
closed toilet seat, cradling his forehead with the heels of his hands,  
elbows resting on his knees.  It had been hours since he'd made the  
slightest attempt to open his eyes.

What it came down to was that she didn't want to see him naked.  Even  
semi-conscious, he was imposing; he must outweigh her by sixty or  
seventy pounds.  Nudity would have nothing to do with vulnerability for  
him and everything to do with a capitulation of modesty on her part.

In her mind, she heard Agent Mulder's voice whispering, Hurt him,  
Scully.

But she did strip him, in spite of herself, and wrestled him into the  
bathtub.  There was a flash of comprehension in his face when she sank  
him into the steaming water, then the eyelids dipped closed again and he  
fell back to muttering.

Both the cheap motel washcloths were black by the time she let the water  
out and re-filled the tub with him still in it.  Without the layer of  
oil and dirt, she could see the small marks on his skin.  A few acne  
scars on his shoulders.  Wine-coloured patch on his upper arm that  
looked like a burn.  Bullet scar on his thigh.  Knife scar on his  
abdomen, dragging through the dark hair.  Raw fingertips that she hadn't  
treated yet.

He wasn't paying the slightest attention to her.  He rocked gently as  
the bathtub filled.

Krycek hissed words in some rough, Slavic language.

Scully took one of the thin towels and ripped it into squares.  She  
wetted one and started washing down his back.  There were bruises that  
she hadn't seen under the oil; someone had beaten him, hard.  When she  
pressed too firmly, he flinched.

And in spite of herself, some of the anger was receding.  When she'd  
been an intern, she'd treated men who sneered at her femininity when  
they weren't in so much pain.  She hadn't hurt them then.  If she hurt  
Krycek now, she'd regret it.

He relaxed enough under her touch that she was able to lean him back,  
cradling his skull in the crook of her elbow to prevent him from  
striking it against the wall.  With another piece of shredded towel,  
she started on his chest and shoulder.  None of the ribs she felt were  
broken, or even visibly cracked.  She wiped the tear-tracks off his  
face.  Water ran down from his hair and down her arm to the elbow,  
making her shiver.  He echoed her.

He was still so cold.  She had to finish this.  The terrycloth ran down  
his belly, scraping away the underground smells.  The cock and balls  
half-hidden in the greying water were more of him than she wanted to  
think about, but she washed them too.  He didn't open his eyes.

It was a little easier to make him stand; he must have relaxed a little  
in the hot water.  She hadn't managed to feed him, yet.  The doctor in  
her brain lectured on the body's famine response while she rubbed him  
dry, guided him like a blind man to bed and wrapped him in blankets.    
The body slows down when it believes starvation is setting in.  You feel  
cold.  You sleep, you don't feel as hungry.  You can stay alive a long  
time that way, almost hibernating, but it's hard for such a basic  
response to let you go.  He was going to have to eat something by  
morning.  

She covered him with another blanket.  She phoned the Gunmen.

*

2:30 am. -23oC.

"Turn off the tape, it's Scully."

"It's off."

"I mean it, Byers, turn the tape off."

Plastic snap.  "It's off."

"Thanks."  Silence.

"Agent Scully, are you OK?"

"I'm fine."

"Did you find him?"  Soft, careful.  She could almost see his face, the  
sweet brown eyes and the beard he grew over that baby face.  Byers was  
Scully's favourite of the Gunmen, the least threatening, the most  
polite.  "Is he dead?  How long was it, anyway?  A week?"

"Four days," she sighed.  "I've got him.  I've got a rental cabin in the  
Black Hills for a while."

"How is he?"

"Like the last rat out in 'The Secret of NIMH'."

"Issue thirty-two of the Gunman - 'British Animal Testing and Related  
Anomalies in Intelligence'."

Her laugh came out shaky, reminding her of the hour.  "It's a  
*children's book*."

"And?"  Was he smiling?

"Not everything is a conspiracy.  Oh, don't go sulking, I didn't mean  
it.  You can explain to me why it is later.  I need you to get some  
things from my apartment for me.  Don't tell Mulder."  She gave him the  
list.

"Doable.  And I understand.  Mulder's still angry.  He went to see  
Senator Matheson yesterday."

"I'm sure.  Take care of him, will you guys?"

"We always do, Scully.  Be careful."

"You too."  Click.

*

Scully sat in the armchair and watched him wake up.  The same Alex  
Krycek, naked and cocooned in that pile of blankets, that she'd washed  
down the previous night.  In spite of her exhaustion, she hadn't been  
able to sleep.

The first sign she had that he was awake, other than a change in the  
rhythm of his breathing, was his sudden contraction into a fetal ball.    
Hearing him cry was like hearing skin tearing.  He cried as if she  
weren't there: lung-ripping, raw, undignified bawling that went on for a  
long time.  For the first ten minutes, she just watched him.  It left  
her cold.  The soft-voiced keening that followed the tears was surreal,  
not something with which she could intervene.  The slow rocking and the  
whimpers were justice.

She only laid a hand on the back of his neck when he started to shake  
convulsively.  The skin there was clammy, but she only had a moment to  
feel it before he flinched away from her touch.  In the course of his  
twisting away, his head came around to face her.

The look in his eyes wasn't even human.  The green irises glittered  
absolutely flat, terrified of something that she couldn't even see.    
More frightened than Mulder with his brain fried by his own drinking  
water.  More frightened than she had been in Donnie Pfaster's closet.    
Krycek looked like he wanted to take his own skin off.

So she settled down beside him and let him wrap himself around her.  She  
couldn't see the man who had let Melissa die in the quietly sobbing  
wreak whose face was buried in her lap.  God, his hair was long.  She  
let it tangle around her fingers.  Shaggy, dark, beautiful hair, red  
highlights under the black.

"Poor baby.  Poor Alex.  Shhh."

Gradually, he calmed.  Scully stayed stroking his hair and the back of  
his neck, mentally retreating to study him a bit.

In his struggling, he'd pushed the blankets down until they were bunched  
around his waist.  The bruises were uglier in daylight.  Besides the  
marks of the beating, the side of his face was vaguely swollen, as  
though he'd been slammed against a wall, and there were clear fist marks  
on his abdomen.  The shiny burn on his shoulder looked to have only  
recently healed.

Krycek's body wasn't thirty years old yet, and it looked like a  
battlefield.  Scully exhausted a little of her rage by tracing each  
pattern of damage on him and imagining the pain that must have  
accompanied it.  If she could convince herself that he'd suffered  
enough, she wouldn't have to hurt him, maybe.

He wouldn't get up.  She freed herself from him and made oriental  
noodles with water from an electric kettle plugged in next to the  
ancient television, watched them soften and drained the hot water away.    
She fed them to him slowly, using her fingers after giving up on the  
fork, easing the soft food between his lips.  He stayed semi-fetal, her  
thigh under his head to prop him up enough to eat.  She had yet to see  
the slightest sign that he recognized her cross his face.

*

(. . . code-breaking in Hong Kong   long nights of it staring at the  
encryption and gradually making some kind of sense out of it   reading  
the first retranslated fragments and finding Pacific Ocean coordinates .  
. .

(. . . and throwing Geraldine back out into the hallway   making a run  
for the window and jumping and leaving Mulder there   the street washed  
in chemical light from the illuminated Cantonese and Mandarin signs . .  
.

(. . . small bones in Mulder's hands grating against my jaw   hips  
between my legs  wall against my back   gun between my ribs  *this is  
for my partner*  hit me  *and this is for me*  hit me  *and this is for  
my father*   gun against my throat going to die any second . . .

(. . . in the dark   ship with a voice like a dead thing   cut into my  
brain talked to me even after it left me ripping out my guts   alone  
with it in the dark   willing to rips my own hands off if it opens that  
door . . .

(in my head

(on my body

(ripped up and bleeding oil from it   rape in my head)

Scream.

"Shhh, Alex, it's all right."

He knew her, a little.  Dumpy little red-haired woman in medical scrubs,  
stone-cold in front of a corpse, a hand on Mulder's arm to pull him  
close enough to talk.  Scully.  

(Melissa Scully bleeding on the hardwood floor)

It was easier just to cry and let her rock him and surface slowly.  He  
was cocooned.  Bedding piled around him used its weight to give him a  
little comfort.  The air was cold.

He whispered, "Thank you."

Her clothes smelled like wood smoke.  She stiffened and pushed him away.    
Pain flashed through Krycek's shoulders at the rough touch, faded slowly  
into the background throbbing in his body.  He twisted up close to her  
again, refusing to let her out of reach.  She was the only thing he  
could imagine that was powerful enough to keep away the dark.

*

Scully woke up still in her clothes.  The blankets she had wrapped  
around Krycek were heaped around her and spilling onto the floor, making  
a haphazard contrast to the still-made bed opposite.  She'd fallen  
asleep against him.  It had been easier than crossing the room every  
time he cried.  The knots of rage in her still wanted to hurt him, but  
there wasn't anyone behind those eyes that she could punish yet, only a  
wreak that shook constantly.  The last time they'd faced off, at 3 am,  
there had been the first sign of recognition he'd shown.  And muted as  
he'd been by sleep, there hadn't been enough to that recognition for him  
to be afraid.

Krycek was gone.

The thermometer just visible through the frosted window declared the  
temperature to be -31o.  Around the cabin, there were trees.  The half-  
hearted light coming through the heavy cloud layer didn't allow even the  
slightest shadows against the snow.  There were no details.  But he    
couldn't survive in that.

When she turned back he was standing in the bathroom doorway with his  
lower torso wrapped clumsily in a knotted sheet.  God, he was big.  If  
she had to fight him . . .

He stepped forward, staggered, and crumpled to his knees.  Before she  
could get to him, he'd pulled himself together and settled onto the  
nearest bed: hers.  All the bruises were still there.  They clutched at  
him.  Scully realized after a moment that he was shaking.

Softly, "Scully."

She padded over.  His skin was cold, and she covered him up again  
absently with the end of the blanket.  He smelled like shaving cream; he  
must have found the toilet things she'd lifted out of Mulder's bag.    
Even after an unshaven week, his cheeks had only been shadowed.  Baby-  
faced.  Scully ran her knuckles absently over his jaw and cheekbones,  
the tapered line of his left ear, soft dark brows, lips.  When she  
rested her hand there, he kissed it.

The blow caught him so abruptly that he fell to the side.  He landed on  
a bracing elbow and stayed there looking at her.  She could hit him  
again, make those colourless lips bleed a little.  She could hurt him  
for a while.  She could get the medical case out of the trunk of the  
car.  No one tortures as well as a doctor.  For once in her life, she  
wanted to be able to use this rage to hurt someone besides herself.

Krycek stayed half-lying on his side, staring at her.  There were  
already so many bruises on his face that she couldn't make out the place  
where she'd hit him.  She wanted so badly for it to be in her to make  
him suffer.

Damn him, how dare he be this submissive.  Just this once, couldn't the  
snake be defiant while it bled to death?

When she sat down beside him on the bed, he settled in beside her  
immediately.  His skin smelled like Mulder, his hair like generic  
shampoo.  She could still remember seeing him hovering behind Mulder  
like a grey-suited ghost in the Quantico autopsy bay.  The man who had  
been Luis Cardinale's partner didn't seem to be in this skin.

*

For Scully, the Gunmen were willing to drive cross-country in the  
beginning of winter.  Thirty-eight hours after her phone call, they  
eased a battered compact through the snow-choked approach and parked  
beside Scully's rental.  She came out to meet them.

The car's interior had a smell like warm light and coffee.  Byers gave  
her a nylon gym bag she recognized from her front closet and a long,  
slow look.  Langly blinked at her from the back seat through greying  
blond lashes.  She wondered briefly if she could just leave with them.

She didn't invite them in, but Byers got out of the car and followed her  
when she walked away.  Langly at least had been willing to let her go  
with only fingertips brushed across her hair and a letter from Frohike  
pressed into her hand.

"Agent Scully, are you OK?" Byers asked softly.

He stood paused behind her, ankle-deep in snow.  The neat, inexpensive  
dress pants below his coat had to leave his legs freezing in this wind.    
Scully looked back at him.  Brown hair and beard, brown eyes, that quiet  
precision that her mother must have hoped she would marry.  And what was  
she to do with this reliable, paranoid, former civil servant?  Tell him  
the truth.  "No, I'm not."

But he only came and wrapped protective arms around her and hugged her  
close against the stiff, wind-shear nylon of his coat.  Scully could  
feel tears icing on her face.  Byers rocked her and whispered nonsense  
words into her hair while she cried, then offered her a handkerchief and  
wiped off her face when she didn't take it from him.  In the flat  
November light, he look older than she expected him to.

He said, "This isn't some sort of mystic game, Scully.  All you have to  
do is end it."  Scully nodded.  She wondered abruptly if Byers and  
Langly were lovers.  "Good girl."  He kissed her hair and let her go.

Langly reached out a long, thin hand to Byers when the bearded man  
slipped back into the driver's seat, squeezed, and leaned over to  
whisper something.  Scully watched them go.  The back of her neck  
prickled at the thought of Krycek waiting for her inside.

*

( . . . that winter, the windows on the dacha frosted up to the point  
that an ice layer like a small glacier grew on the windowsills   warm  
days when a little of that ice melted and made lakes on the painted wood      
mopping the dampness away with the sleeve of an old shirt . . .

( . . . when sleeping was a matter of nesting with piles of blankets,  
pillows front and back and layers and layers of comforters and coats      
wood stove that you had to start early in the morning   standing around  
it wrapped in socks and that giant old bathrobe waiting for the heat to  
get out . . .

( . . . so wonderful to live like that after the Moscow boarding house  
where there was never enough fuel   the time the woman across the hall  
came knocking carrying all her bedding and crawled into bed too   just  
sharing body heat and the comfort of another person   sound of her  
breathing soft female and warm   waking later without remembering her  
and panicking, automatically assuming that there was a wolf in the room  
. . .

(there's a wolf in the room . . .)

"Krycek!"  

Slap.

She'd hit him again.  It hadn't been rage, though, just a quick and  
deliberate strike, to remind him that he'd been drifting.  He raised his  
face to meet her, blank and frighteningly passive.  She'd asked him  
something . . .

"Were you involved in my abduction?"

"Yeah."

"Did you send Duane Barry to my house?"

"No."

"Did you tell him where I lived?"

"No."

The tape recorder's spools hissed slightly.  He wondered how much she'd  
be able to make of their conversation, later.  Both their voices were so  
flat they might have been doing a polygraph.  Nothing they'd said in the  
past hour made more than residual sense to him.  The greatest part of  
his mind was occupied by the extent to which his head hurt, and the  
exhaustion that was a steady ache behind his eyes.

"Did you know what he'd do with me?"

"Yeah."

"Did you know who was helping him?"

"Yeah."

"Tell me."

He might not have told her, but he hurt all over and he was so tired and  
her gun was resting on her knee with the safety off.  He gave her  
fragments - locations that she must know had already been abandoned,  
names that likely weren't legally connected to any living person.  And  
then he told her about standing on Skyland mountain with his arms around  
Mulder, staring at the too-brilliant light in the sky until it left  
burns on his retinas, and about Mulder breaking free of him and  
beginning his long assault on the shivering lunatic who'd been kneeling  
in the mud where she'd disappeared.

"What did they do to me?" she asked.

"I don't know."  She raised the gun.  "I don't.  I'm not a fucking  
biologist, I don't know what they do."

She sneered a little.  The expression was alien on her, and he suspected  
it was an affectation rather than a natural reaction.  "Your tape didn't  
tell you?"

"It took three months to translate just the ship's location.  I had to  
learn Cherokee.  I had to diagram equations like I haven't since  
college.  I didn't work on anything that wasn't immediately marketable."

Silence.

"I'm sorry," he said.

She said, "I should have left you down there."  Holstered her gun, found  
her boots and coat, and went outside.  He sat in the chair where he was  
handcuffed and stared at the water glass she'd been holding out of his  
reach.  She didn't come back for two hours.  When she did, she unchained  
him without saying anything and let him go to bed.  He was most of the  
way to sleep before he felt her stroke the back of his neck, briefly,  
and withdraw.

*

She found herself awake and shivering at four-thirty in the morning; but  
it still took her a long time to pull herself together enough to get up.    
Somewhere in her subconscious, there was a nightmare that she'd just  
barely surfaced from.  The blank terror of it had generated tears; the  
pillowcase was damp and getting cold.

Scully wrapped herself in the bedspread and padded in the dark to the  
bathroom.  If she could just avoid turning the lights on, she was sure  
she'd be able to sleep again.  She groped in the half-dark for a  
washcloth and the faucet, washed her face without looking.  Trails of  
water wetted the collar of her shirt.  One ran across her collarbone and  
slipped down between her breasts.  

It wasn't working.  The only way she could imagine sleep right now was  
as a forum for further nightmares.  She wrapped the blanket tighter  
around herself and padded back into the bedroom.  Krycek's breathing was  
so soft she had to stop her own to hear it.  She moved past him and  
settled at the foot of her own bed, cowled like a hermit.  The moon was  
still up and the curtains were thin; she could make out most of the  
details of the room, but no colours.  

She wanted to go home.  She couldn't imagine what she was going to do  
with the man in the other bed.  No matter how many times she fantasized  
it, her brain wouldn't wrap itself around the idea of killing him.  She  
kept seeing masses of blood and the fey, childish look in those pale  
green eyes.  But the part of her that had watched Melissa die still  
wanted justice too much to turn him loose.  In prison he'd last a matter  
of hours; Cardinale's blood was still on her hands from that mistake.    
She wanted a quiet, dark place where she could leave Krycek and never  
think about him again.

She never should have let him out.

And she was still crying, just so softly she could barely hear it  
herself.

Softly, "Scully?"

Krycek knelt in front of her.  His skin was an almost perfect white in  
the monochrome darkness.  Too much of it was exposed in his t-shirt and  
boxers; he had to be horribly cold.  She should try and get the heat  
register to work.

"Tell you something, Scully?" he asked.

She looked him over, nodded.

"Story I was told about the civil war in Russia, the one after the  
Revolution."  She watched him without expression.  He shrugged.  "The  
Red army general comes to the house of this peasant farmer and demands  
that the peasant hide him.  It's open war in the country, the general's  
separated from his men and the White army's close.  So the peasant takes  
the general into the bedroom and tells him to lie on an empty bedframe.    
And on top of the general, the peasant and his wife pile a whole bunch  
of feather beds and blankets and all their clothes until the pile's  
about three feet high.  

"Then the White army comes.  They search everywhere, break everything,  
sort of make a mess and threaten.  And when they get to the bedroom,  
they take out their bayonets and they drive them into this pile of  
blankets and clothes.  Have you ever seen a Russian bayonet?"

"No."  

"Well, it's got a blade about ten inches long on the end.  Then the  
White soldiers leave, because they haven't found anything.  They  
threaten the peasant with conscription, but for some reason they don't  
actually take him.

"The peasant and his wife uncover the general, who's completely unhurt  
except for a tiny cut on his ear where he was grazed by a bayonet.  And  
at that moment, his own troops march into the yard.  The peasant follows  
the general outside and watches him mount his horse.  Then, because he's  
feeling incredibly brave or incredibly stupid, he says, 'General, if I  
may ask a question?'

"'Ask,' says the general.

"So the peasant asks, 'How did it feel to be under those blankets while  
the soldiers were driving in their bayonets?'

"The general looks at him for a second, then he orders his troops to  
seize the peasant.  They take him back to their camp and beat him, tie  
him to a stake and leave him there overnight, tell him he's going to be  
shot in the morning.

"So, in the morning, he's standing there covered in blood, and he's  
starving because they haven't given him anything, and the firing squad  
comes out.  One of them sort of looks the peasant over and then offers  
him a cigarette.  He takes it and he's grateful for it.  While he's  
trying to smoke it with no hands, the firing squad raises their guns.

"Then the general comes along and he says, 'Peasant, do you remember  
that you asked me how it felt to be hidden under your blankets with the  
bayonets driving in?'  

"The peasant's just about terrified at this point, but he says yes, he  
remembers.

"'Well,' says the general, I'd imagine it's about the same way you feel  
now.  Only without the cigarette.'

"And he let the peasant go."

He had settled cross-legged at her feet.  The flat greys of the room  
didn't show even slight wrinkles in his skin.  In that light, Krycek was  
perfectly beautiful, luminous and fragile.  She extricated an arm from  
her blankets and ran three fingers through the short hair at his temple.    
He leaned into the touch, absorbing her body heat with a wonderful  
sensuality that she'd never seen before in a man.  The same movement of  
his head brought her fingers around to his mouth, and smoothly between  
his lips.  For a long time, she was held there, the pads of her fingers  
pressing against the warm enamel of his teeth and being sucked gently.    
Only when she softened the muscles in her hand he relaxed his jaw and  
ran faintly jagged teeth over her skin.

She'd never imagined that anyone male would touch her like this.  Her  
fingers were deep in his mouth, rubbing at the thin skin, and being  
massaged all over by his tongue.  He released them slowly, then bent and  
licked delicately over her inner wrist.  His hands had never moved from  
his lap.

Nobody should be so beautiful.  Certainly, Krycek shouldn't have been.    
His whole body was marked with blood collecting under the skin, so that  
every muscle must have ached.  She could just barely remember what he  
looked like under his clothes.  Almost absently, she reached down and  
caught the hem of his t-shirt, lifting the garment over his head.  There  
was no resistance in him; he raised his arms to get free of the cloth  
and then dropped his hands back to his thighs and sat watching her.  

When she didn't move, he did.  White hands ran up his thighs and over  
his hips and ribs to his shoulders.  For a moment, he stayed there, then  
dropped one hand to trace around his nipple and then trace the faint  
lines of hair down his torso to the waist of his boxers.  The other hand  
followed it, and again when he reversed the pattern and brought his  
fingers back up to rest on his collarbone.  The eyes he kept locked on  
hers were absolutely open.  She wanted to read some kind of aggression  
into his delicate exhibitionism, but all she could see was a cautious  
assessment of her reactions.

For a long time he knelt at her feet, running faint touches over his own  
skin and never touching her.  Only when her leg jerked in reaction, he  
bent and ran that gossamer tongue over the bare skin of her foot and  
ankle.  His eyes came back to hers and he waited with his mouth on her  
skin for her to respond.  She nodded slightly, and he moved, raising his  
mouth towards her knee in a line of barely-felt kisses.

The kiss he placed on the inside of her knee was open-mouthed and warm.    
The next one was on her thigh, and it pushed a little, spreading her  
legs.  The progress he made was infinitesimal, and by the time he'd come  
far enough up her body to have to kneel forward onto his hands, she was  
shivering from wanting him.  He had to be able to smell it, she was so  
soaking wet.  But there was still nothing aggressive in him, just that  
quiet watchfulness.  When his mouth moved again, it came up against her  
panties, and his tongue stroked her vagina through the damp cotton.

Against her body, she heard him whisper, "Let me, Scully, please."

She let him.  His hands finally came up and stripped her panties,  
cradling her hips in the seconds she had to lift up to be rid of them.    
Then they were gone again, back on his thighs, and his face was pressed  
between her legs.

She thought her chest would explode at the first pressure from that  
tongue.  He traced the lines of her inner labia with his mouth, stroking  
over her clit so delicately she thought at first that he hadn't realized  
he'd found it.  But on the next sweep he pressed there for a long  
moment, then sucked hard, and accepted the pressure as she bucked  
against his face.  It was only after that that his tongue pushed into  
her.  It was as good as anything she'd had before in her life.  Once he  
was sure of her, he pushed hard, and she felt him impossibly deep, as  
though he were kissing her all the way into her belly.  He pulled back  
after a moment, then rubbed his lips against her clitoris, coaxing small  
animal sounds out of her and absorbing all the shocks as she shook  
against him, and came.

He stayed like that while she came down.  When she was sure of all the  
movements of her body again, Krycek was still pressed between her  
thighs, resting with most of his face hidden by her public hair and only  
the jade of his eyes visible.  She reached a hand out and ran her  
fingers through his hair.

She was gathering herself to sit upright when she finally registered his  
arousal.  The hands in his lap didn't conceal the erection pressing  
against the thinness of his underwear.  His shoulders were bare, and  
they were shaking.  He might have been cold, but his nipples were hard,  
and his pupils were so dilated that the colour was almost totally lost.  

Scully leaned forward until she was bent almost double, and kissed him.    
The taste in his mouth was hers, and he held very still.  It took both  
her hands to ease him forward into contact with her body.  When she let  
his mouth go, he dropped his head and wrapped his lips around the tip of  
her breast.

Scully whispered, "Do you want me?"

"I'm yours as long as you want me."  His lips still so close to her skin  
that she could feet the vibrations when he spoke.

"Do you want me, Alex?"

"Please . . ."

He pressed up against her, kissing her breasts deeply and running his  
teeth over the nipples.  She hardly felt his weight shift, but when she  
next registered his position, he was crouched in front of her, guiding  
her legs around his waist.  And lifted.

She didn't think she'd ever had a partner raise her so easily.    
Certainly not one as frail as Krycek should have been.  But he had her  
arms around his neck and her legs around his waist and he carried her  
across the bedroom until her back was pressed to the wall, only letting  
her go when she was braced against the plaster.  His hands were  
everywhere bracing her while she slid down his body.

When he leaned back, he drew her with him, and she found herself fitted  
to the lines of his body.  The thigh between hers thrust her up and  
pushed her legs apart.  His mouth was everywhere along her neck and  
shoulders.  She could feel his teeth running over her bare skin, moving  
so intricately  that she thought he must be saying something, if she  
could just make out what it was, but the breath rasping over her body  
wouldn't resolve into anything like English.  She kept her fingers in  
his hair, holding him down.  

It surprised her how much control he'd given up, again.  She shouldn't  
have had any at all - her back was to the wall, and a man half again her  
size had her bent half over backwards, but her hand was on his neck, and  
she could hurt him badly just by pressing her thumb down hard.  Instead,  
she shifted her grip to the side and rubbed against his jugular while he  
sucked at the base of her throat, and again he moved into the touch,  
rubbing his whole body against her in the process.  The cock pressed  
against her left a hot liquid trail down her hip and up to her waist.    
God, he was so hard he must hurt, but his whole attention was still on  
her rapidly bruising skin.

"Alex."  As much a hiss as anything.  One of her arms came up to wrap  
almost completely around his head.  Without raising his face, he brought  
both hands up and lifted her, braced her, and brought her down onto his  
erection.

There was a stretch of time she couldn't measure in which her retinas  
exploded and she was temporarily blind and shaking.  When she surfaced,  
she was in the same position, pressed against the wall with Alex  
Krycek's unreasonably hard cock pressed so deep inside her she was  
shaking.  He'd stopped kissing her, but his mouth was open and pressed  
against her neck.  There was something wet, something warmer than  
saliva, on her skin.  She released his head to run her fingers through  
it and bring it to her eyes.  It was blood.

With a hand that shook, he raised Krycek's face to hers.  He had bitten  
almost completely through his lower lip.  God, he was trying so hard to  
keep from moving, to keep from hurting her.  All the skin of his that  
she could see was frighteningly pale, and his eyes were urgent.

"Do it," she whispered.

His first buck pushed so far up inside her that she almost screamed; the  
next shook her whole body.  Using the foot that still touched the floor,  
she braced herself enough to push back against him.  The other twined  
around his thigh.

It felt good to let go and let him fuck her.  His whole body was centred  
on hers, to the point that she sometimes doubted his pleasure.  Only  
occasionally, he whimpered and kissed her again, and the flashes of his  
eyes she could see were electric.

"Thank you, Scully, thank you thank you thank you."  Like a mantra.    
"Thank you beautiful krassavitsa love you so sorry thank you."

He lifted her by the hips and rubbed himself down the length of her.    
The cock that had been massaging her inner muscles shifted and struck  
the perfect spot just in front of her pubic bone.  She hissed, and  
Krycek repeated the movement, cradling her to keep the position.  She  
whimpered and pressed her breasts against his chest, orgasming slowly,  
gradually folding herself backwards so that he was supporting her whole  
weight.  While she was still shaking, he finished himself in short, fast  
thrusts, and cried out almost silently.

The cold of the room took several minutes to penetrate her brain.  It  
came up on her as a slow shiver, so that she was horribly chilled almost  
before she'd noticed.  Krycek ran his fingers up her back and shook  
himself a little.  Then he gathered her up and carried her back to the  
bed, wrapped them both in the blankets, and twined himself around her,  
skin to skin.  She drifted.  Krycek was against her back; she could feel  
him, as cleanly awake as an animal, and watching.

*

In the morning, she gathered everything of theirs that she could find  
and loaded the car.  It was cold, but the block heater had been plugged  
in overnight, and after several grinding false starts, the engine turned  
over.  Krycek followed her out, dressed in clothes she'd pirated from  
Mulder at various points in their relationship and which fit the man  
accompanying her badly.  He looked awkward in them, even more so than he  
had in the cheap suits he'd worn when they first met.  But, then, she'd  
never seen him look totally comfortably in anything except nakedness.

He accepted the passenger's seat without comment, and perhaps without  
any memory of the last time he'd been slumped in it.  The last time her  
rage had gotten the better of her, she'd cleaned the upholstery and  
thrown a blanket over the damage she couldn't repair.  There wasn't any  
evidence left, really, of the wreck she'd dug out of the ground.

She was going to have to sell Krycek to the bureau, somehow.  Bringing  
criminal charges against him would only leave him a corpse.  A witness  
of some sort, maybe.  She'd have to find agents she trusted enough to  
protect him.  The Gunmen would probably help her.

Krycek sat quietly, leaning a little against the window and apparently  
listening to the noise of the car running over the ice and asphalt.    
Seen in profile, his eyelashes because his most prominent feature.  They  
seemed to take up half his face, and they radiated a sensuality that was  
missing from the child-soft lines of his other features.  When she  
turned on the radio, he roused himself and turned quiet green eyes on  
her.

"Where've you been?" she said.

"Hmm."

"You've been drifting for days.  I was wondering where you were."

"Russia.  I lived there for a while."

"What was it like?"

"Nice.  Cold.  It looked sort of like this, a lot of the time."

"I'm not sure I'd call this nice."  The day was absolutely flat.  What  
sunlight there was was diffuse, coming through too many layers of cloud.    
There were no shadows and no signs of human life.

"It's not so bad.  Sort of looks like home to me."

"Russia is home?"

"My family's there," he said absently.

"Why'd you leave?"

"I fucked up a kid, badly, during an assignment.  The men upstairs said  
they'd take care of it, but that I'd have to work in a different arena for a  
bit."

She must have looked horrified, because he said, softly, "Did you think  
I was the victim, Scully?"  She looked at him.  "I *worked* for them. I  
killed for them.  There isn't anything you can do to me that they can't  
do worse."

It was the truth, but it was more than she wanted to hear.  The bastard  
was always under her skin.  She should have left him buried, let  
sleeping dogs lie, and maybe he would have died and she wouldn't ever  
have had to deal with him.  She wouldn't have to explain his presence to  
Mulder.  She stopped the car.

"Get out," she said.

"Scully," he hissed.  "It's thirty fucking below."

"Get out."

"You aren't going to leave me here."

She felt sick.  She'd shown him too much compassion, forgotten that he  
was such a stone killer, and he'd gotten close to her.  If she'd  
listened to her initial instincts to hurt him, things would have been  
better.

"Get out."

"You aren't going to do this," he said softly.

He didn't believe she could do it.  "Get out," she ground out.  He  
didn't move.

She slid her gun out of its holster, kept it close beside her knee.    
"Get out."

He didn't move.

She hit him with the gun.

It was quite possibly the most horribly sound she'd ever heard.  The  
skin on the side of his face *tore*.  The gun metal hit bone with a  
dull, wet sound.  And Krycek screamed.

(Killer.  Killer.  Missy bleeding out her life.)

"Get.  Out."

Groping blindly, he unbuckled his seatbelt and opened the door.  When he  
tried to get out, he fell.

As soon as he was free, she pulled the passenger door shut and  
accelerated.  The rear view mirror gave her only glimpses of him, curled  
up on himself in the snow, staring after her.  The greyness of the light  
was already blurring him.  If she was lucky, maybe the earth would open  
and swallow him up.


End file.
